


Echo

by Lilly_White



Category: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22301941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_White/pseuds/Lilly_White
Summary: "Is that what I have withered down to, my love?Nightmares? Dreams? A torment of imagination?"[Old fic from 2009]
Relationships: Count Dracula/Mina Harker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Echo

**Author's Note:**

> There was a rerun of Bram Stoker's Dracula at my local cinema, and I just fell head over heels in love with it all over again. I'd never watched it in a cinema before and let me tell you, the OST in surround sound, and that delicious atmosphere... the whole movie is like a dream, and when you watch it again it feels like slipping back into an old recurrent dream that you didn't realise you'd missed so much. Alhkdfgjhdkjg it's difficult to explain how much I love this movie and how it makes me feel. Anyway, I thought I'd publish this old fic here just to mark the occasion. :D The style is a bit heavy, I tried to edit it for better readability but it's still old so, yeah.

The covers were glued to her sweaty limbs as she shifted in her sleep. Rose silk wrapped around her legs, her waist, her small white hands. She felt its soft caress with a giddiness that was not in her nature- her, a sensible English wife; her, a schoolteacher whose imprudence had only ever stretched as far as profane literature.

Wilhelmina, the humble woman of little talent, of little ambition. She had never wanted to disturb anything, nor would she ever seek to wreak havoc in anyone’s life. She had always followed what everyone else called ‘the right path’ – she had tried to keep the tips of her lacquered shoes just behind the line. What was her life? What _had it_ been? A wanton pulse hidden beneath the soft beige powder, coquettish smiles veiled by the wooden bones of a fan, a noiseless heart quivering feebly in the steel-boned prison of a corset. A lifeline made of lace; the refined etiquette of 19th century English women. It was an existence of lingering perfumes, of light sprinkling laughter, of eternal expectations and desires hidden from the world to cover their shame. Spinning masks, satin gloves furtively brushing the arm of danger and seduction, but never once taking hold - never once abandoning sanity or principles if only for the sake of survival - be it the survival of their image, their reputation, or their veritable selves.

Where was the English woman and her precious life principles now? The Darkness laughed as she twisted in her sleep, snakelike and delicious, the curves and domes of her flesh emerging from its shadows. Her mouth was parted as though she were drinking in its obscurity, growing drunk on its tasteful promises. In her unconsciousness she stretched out her delicate fingers into the void of night, she extracted from its uncertain depths a filament of dream. Her blunt nails ground against skin of an almost liquid countenance, as cool and silky as water, ever changeable. 

The beast's skin had no human warmth, it had no human suppleness or authenticity. And yet she bent herself towards it, she was drawn to the cold, drawn to the exact contrary of anything a woman might ever desire, or _should_ ever desire. It was a thing of nightmares, a thing which plucked flowers from the festering chasms of the Pit. That she could be attracted to this thing - it was proof, it had to be, of what she had always believed. That in every woman lies an overbearing hunger that goes unsatisfied, that they are forced to bury so that they might safeguard the peace of mind of men. And here, with this beast, for the first time in her life - there was a promise of satisfaction.

The devil’s eyes were on her, she could feel his burning gaze as keenly as gobs of warm honey on her flesh. It was the look of a master; the look of the possessor on the prized possession. He knew he had her, and he knew she could not refuse his touch, for that was all she desired now. The Darkness smiled a cruel smile as the English woman, the learned school mistress who clung to her silver cross, the faithful and virtuous wife offered her frailty to his crooked hands. And the monster's heart stood still, irises flared crimson as she revealed her naked desire.

Oh, how she had wanted this! To finally escape from the self-conscious world in which she was obliged to live! Her hands wandered over flesh that was so unlike her husband’s and yet that was so familiar to her - her coal eyes rolled up to meet his, and her lips sought out that extinguished life which somehow animated her own.

From beneath his top hat, he stood as an ingenious parody of the gentleman. The kiss she received from him much resembled his appearance: it was an act, a performance. And yet she preferred this satirical delight by far. She knew reality only too well – she had been hiding behind its curtains for too long. Too much reality only shuns one's vision of _everything else_. But a woman is only rarely offered the chance to feed her own darkness – it is not deemed as healthy to do so, and yet, she would rather a full cup of delicious poison than a half-cup of tasteless, too-young wine. Must she really pick out fruits from the realm of all that is imaginary and undefinable to reach satisfaction?

She was a hollow doll, always seeking what could give her true weight. Were the streets of London a masquerade of such dolls, each weighing down their emptiness with sumptuous dresses and coiled hairstyles and heartbreakingly heavy, heavy gazes?

Her prince was a vaporous promise of romance, a spectre who held roses in insubstantial fingers. She could feel his breath like metal rasping against her lips, those hands descending to take her by the waist. She was kneeling, throat exposed, and he was all around her – he chilled her to the bone, and further than that; he touched her very core. He took as much pleasure as she did perverse pain in wringing it till the blood began to drip. There was a voice in her ear, Romanian accent encroaching it like rust, and his head dipped in a sensuous dare - daring her to let go - daring her into death. 

_Dvs sunteþi dragostea de viaþa mea…_

_…Viaþa mea…_

A hand shot out.

“Mina? Mina!”

Hot, clumsy fingers scrambled their way through the knotted sheets and found her skin. She had been sighing, moaning, her forearms pressed against her chest, hands on her face and tangled in her hair. A frown marred her beautiful face, Luxuria in person, a writhing sin in silken sheets. Her throat, like a swan’s, extended as she burrowed her head into her cushion, collarbones delicate in the moonlight. Her gown stretched over her virgin curves, outlining her breasts, transparent folds plunging into the shadow between her legs, catching between her fingers as she spread her hands over herself.

She stopped when his grip turned iron. He looked at her with his pathetically innocent eyes, grey strands falling over his face. He looked at her with the anxious eyes of a husband, the ignorant eyes of a partner who fails to notice the changes in the woman with whom he has chosen to spend his life. Down-to-earth, he thought it was all over- he believed all their troubles ended, several months ago, when the monster was ‘put to rest’. _Put down_ was more like it.

He loomed over her, cutting her out of moonlight’s reach. She slowly opened her eyes, lashes ungluing from her tearstained cheeks. Her eyelids were heavy. She was drunk with sleep and something else, something she would never admit to him, something he would never guess anyway.

“Are you all right?”

She stared at him. Her eyes lost their delectable lustre as consciousness dawned brighter. She closed her mouth, reached up to him. He wound a comforting arm around her, gave her neck a prude little kiss, whispered things to her that she hardly even registered as she bathed in a thermal shock of sensation, of dream and reality.

_Is that what I have withered down to, my love?_

_Nightmares? Dreams? A torment of imagination?_

The moonlight caught fresh tears sparkling beneath her lashes. She clung to her husband’s arm, terrified yet enrapt by the furious stampede of her heart, the goosebumps covering her skin, and the lingering feeling of the Devil’s eyes feasting on her flesh.

_Are dreams not what we die to reach?_

“Oh, Jonathan,” she sobbed, ever the ridiculous English bourgeoise, the ridiculous human bride. She clung to warmth, and this human man she did not love, because that was all she had.

Winding her legs around the sheets, she shackled her eyes to the light, heart hammering, dreading sleep, dreading consciousness, dreading the awful echoing voice.


End file.
